Healthy Japanese Recipes

This crispy Japanese chicken recipe comes complete with a creamy warm slaw on the side. Serve with steamed brown rice or buckwheat soba noodles to round out the meal. We like to use chicken cutlets made with dark-meat chicken thighs--they have more than twice the immune-boosting zinc of white-meat chicken breasts.

Versatile miso (fermented soybean paste) keeps for months in the refrigerator and adds instant flavor to soups, sauces, dips, marinades and salad dressings. In general, the lighter the miso, the milder and sweeter its flavor. Light miso is the key to the wonderful flavor of this salmon.

These Japanese rice triangles can be made simply with seasoned rice or filled with vegetables or protein. Cooking a bit of starchier short-grain white rice with the brown ensures they hold together—but still gives you a filling dose of fiber.

Skip the rice and just use seaweed to make these healthy sushi rolls filled with smoked salmon, avocado, carrot and cucumber. Serve with soy sauce for dipping.

Powdered green tea blended with sweet whipped cream is a popular parfait topping in Japan, particularly in Kyoto. Here the cream is lightened with low-fat yogurt cheese to make a pretty and delicious topping for poached pears and other desserts.

One bite of this healthy stir-fry recipe and you'll start thinking about what else you can stir miso butter into. Spread the miso butter on roast chicken or toss it with steamed vegetables. Serve with rice noodles or brown rice.

Making your own pickled ginger is easy and delicious. Pickled ginger is served as a palate cleanser between sushi courses. This pickled ginger recipe has no added dyes, unlike store-bought pickled ginger, which often contains food dye.

Apples and mild white miso lightly sweeten this easy noodle soup recipe. It's got plenty of flavor with few ingredients, but feel free to add a dash of hot sauce for zing. Serve with a watercress salad.

This healthy bento box idea makes it easy, healthy and affordable to have sushi for lunch as often as you'd like! Skip the rolling and place sushi ingredients like rice, shrimp and avocado in a bento for a packable lunch for work.

Bring out the flavors of salmon with a Japanese-inspired infusion of ginger, sesame oil and wasabi. If you serve these patties on whole-wheat buns, consider reduced-fat mayonnaise and sliced cucumbers as condiments. Or skip the buns and set the patties atop a vinegary salad of greens, carrots, radishes and sprouts.

Yakitori--chicken skewers common in Japan--get a thick soy glaze before and after grilling for maximum flavor in this healthy dinner recipe. Double or triple the recipe for a fun party appetizer. Serve with steamed short-grain brown rice or over rice noodles drizzled with the extra sauce.

Flank steak takes on savory Asian flavors with this quick steak marinade recipe. We like buckwheat soba noodles for their nutty flavor but any noodle, such as rice noodles or spaghetti, works well too.

Dashi is a versatile Japanese fish stock that only requires three ingredients. See some tips below for ideas for recipes to use it in.

This Japanese recipe for beef negimaki rolls (in which beef flavored with teriyaki sauce is wrapped around scallions) includes asparagus as well for extra vegetables.

This quick, healthy dinner salad recipe is ready in 40 minutes thanks to preshredded carrots and coleslaw mix. If you have leftover quinoa, skip Step 1 and use 2 cups in the salad. If you want a bigger flavor kick in the dressing, up the wasabi powder to 1 tablespoon.

This healthy edamame recipe is a classic Japanese preparation. Enjoy these nibbles as an appetizer or healthy snack.

Mild-flavored spaghetti squash is a great swap for noodles, but here it's showcased on its own dressed with a healthy dressing spiked with salty miso. Serve with roasted chicken or fish.

Chicken meatballs called tsukune are a Japanese-restaurant favorite--they're essentially a chicken sausage mixture flavored with garlic and ginger. Use flat sword-shaped skewers instead of traditional round bamboo skewers to keep the meatballs from slipping when you try to turn them. Serve with bowls of steamed rice on the side.

Tataki is a typical Japanese preparation in which beef or fish is seared on the outside, left very rare inside, thinly sliced and served with a citrusy soy sauce. In this version, a springy salad of crisp radishes and carrot matchsticks combined with sliced onion provides textural contrast to the flavorful steak. Serve this dish over a bed of buckwheat soba noodles to make it a meal.

The round, rich taste (also known as umami) of miso soup perfectly complements plump, briny clams. For the base of the soup you can use just water and miso, which you can find at most supermarkets. But if you can find dashi granules, they're worth adding for a more intense umami taste.

Green tea, delicately flavored with ginger and almond, makes a delightful poaching medium for pears.

Ramen gets a healthy makeover in this “spiralized” vegetable noodle recipe. We swap noodles made from mild turnips for ramen noodles, but other vegetables, such as zucchini or yellow squash, would also make noodles perfect for this Asian-inspired recipe. Serve with sriracha hot sauce for a kick.

In this healthy fried rice recipe, shrimp, eggplant and edamame are tossed with tangy Japanese ponzu sauce for a delicious one-bowl dinner. If you don't have leftover cooked rice on hand, be sure to thoroughly cool your rice before adding it to the wok--if it's too warm, it creates too much steam and sticks to the wok. To quickly cool warm rice, spread out on a large baking sheet and refrigerate while you prep the rest of your ingredients, about 15 minutes.

There's sour, sweet, salty and bitter... and then there's “umami.” That's the Japanese term for the “fifth” taste sensation, a delicious meaty or savory taste. This taste comes from glutamates, and can be found in anchovies, soy sauce, fish sauce and tomatoes. This dish, made with miso (fermented soybean paste) is, to use our term, “umami-licious.”